Lagatar24 Desk
Muzaffarpur: A cyber fraud incident in Muzaffarpur has left an IT engineer, Vishal Kashyap, duped of ₹7.74 lakh. Vishal, a resident of Balu Ghat and an employee of a private company, fell prey to a scam where the fraudster posed as an officer from the Mumbai Crime Branch. The fraudster kept Vishal in a “digital arrest” for four hours, convincing him that a serious case was registered in his name. Under the pretext of clearing the charges, the fraudster made Vishal transfer ₹7.74 lakh into three separate accounts before releasing him. Realizing the fraud, Vishal lodged an FIR at the cyber police station. Cyber DSP Seema Devi stated that the investigation is underway.
Vishal informed the police that on October 14 at 6 PM, he received a call from an unknown number. The caller, identifying himself as Aakash Verma, claimed to be an employee of a courier company. He informed Vishal that a parcel sent using his Aadhaar card was returned from Iran after the receiver refused to accept it. The parcel, which was under investigation by the Mumbai Crime Branch, allegedly contained five expired Iranian passports, a laptop, three credit cards, a pen drive, and 450 grams of MDMA drugs. A payment of ₹93,410 was made for the parcel, which was shipped on October 8.
Scammer Gathered Aadhaar Details via Skype Call
The fraudster then posed as a Crime Branch officer and threatened Vishal. He initiated a Skype call to gather Vishal’s Aadhaar details, which he already had. The scammer instructed Vishal to check his personal loan eligibility via a mobile app and seemed to know exactly how much loan Vishal was eligible for. Using this information, the scammer got Vishal to approve a personal loan and transfer ₹7.74 lakh in eight installments to three different bank accounts. The police have registered a case and are actively investigating the matter.
